How to Build a College Application List

College Search & Selection
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<p>In the scenario Consolation described, in the contest of this thread, the problem for the applicant is finding a list of colleges to apply to that includes colleges </p>

<p>a) challenging enough to be interesting for a very accomplished high school student, </p>

<p>and </p>

<p>b) likely to admit that applicant so that the applicant ends up somewhere fitting. </p>

<p>I think that’s a tough problem. If there are colleges on the low end of the top tier that reject applicants because those applicants are too good for those colleges, that only complicates matters more. (I have no idea if there are a lot of colleges that make admission decisions that way, but at least some are reputed to do that in multiple, independent anecdotes.)</p>

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<p>^^^Most of those anecdotes involve Washington Univ. St. Louis. Since I live in Missouri, I know a lot of students who apply there, including many from last year. In only one case was a very strong student wait-listed. Although the student did make a visit to campus, he declined to fill out any of the merit scholarship applications, and did not even pretend to his guidance counselor that he was interested in the school. So, if I were to detail his extraordinary academic record, everyone on CC would say “There, I told you so!”, and perhaps that would be justified, but on the other hand, the admissions committee did guess correctly in this case.</p>

<p>On the other hand, I know a handful of very superior students–including my son–who were accepted, even though their records were worthy of application to any school in the country. All of them took the time to visit, to interview and to fill out merit application awards. A couple of them–not including my son–are attending.</p>

<p>I am not convinced there is a lot of merit to the rumors. However, I do believe they should be included in the list of schools that want to see considerable demonstrated interest.</p>

<p>Consolation, your son is in a bit of a gray area, in my opinion. None of us parents want to believe it, but there are actually a lot of students out there in this big country of ours with records like that. Don’t scrimp on applications to selective schools.</p>

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<p>midmo, I agree. I can assure you that I do not have an inflated idea of his chances or relative qualifications. My point was basically that the oft-repeated strategy of applying to a few well chosen safeties, matches, and reaches and building the list from the bottom up does not so easily apply to some kids. For them, casting a wider net makes more sense.</p>

<p>BTW, I’ve read about WUSTL making use of its waitlist, but I’ve read the same thing about Carleton and Oberlin, just to name a couple more.</p>

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<p>This thread is helpful, I hope, to parents of current juniors and sophomores who are getting PSAT-related emails. It’s giving me some ideas about which colleges’ emails my son might like to apply to as a means of using “demonstrated interest” to move a college from the “reach” category into the “match” category.</p>

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<p>Make sure your senior has a lot of matches because senior year grades are unknown. I’ve seen a lot of kids have C in AP Calc/AP Physics/AP lit(senior year) which they did not take into account when they make the college list.</p>

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<p>This is a very interesting thread. I don’t chime in too often but thought I’d put my two cents worth in this time seeing my 3rd child is a Junior and starting her search now. Obviously we’re on the West Coast.</p>

<p>CHILD (S) #1-Reaches UCLA (Very big reach)
UCSD
Match- Cal Poly-Slo
University of Arizona
Safety- Arizona State</p>

<p>Fairly certain he would get in Arizona schools which he liked them both. He ended up getting into all schools with UCLA being a huge surprise and that is where he went. </p>

<p>CHILD (D) #2-Reach UCB
UCSB
UCD
Match- Cal Poly-SLO
UCI<br>
Safety- Cal State Long Beach
Cal State Fullerton
San Diego State
D got into all but UCB and UCSB which she didn’t really care if she went there anyway. She ended up going to her last choice, San Diego State, the school she didn’t even want to apply to but we asked her to because that is where we went to school. After we visited last Feb., she fell in love with the school and SD and that was it for her, she never looked back. She loves her school, is doing well and is very happy, plus we get to see her once a month or so.</p>

<p>Just goes to show that matches and safeties are very important. Also kids change their minds and visits are really important. Although we didn’t apply to any private schools, I think my kids were fairly realistic in their schools which ended up giving them choices, any of which they were happy with. Now on to CHILD #3 (D). She needs to work on her list a little more. Only Cal and UW are on it. Good luck to all of you!</p>

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<p>I’d like to hear some other ideas about how students are putting together their application lists. Thanks for the earlier replies.</p>

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<p>Last year, my D followed Momrath’s philosophy for how many schools to apply to and at what levels. I hope she is OK with me citing it here:</p>

<p>"If on the other hand you or your child is aiming for a highly selective school because of perceived academic excellence or intellectual environment, then I feel strongly that s/he should apply to 4 to 5 reaches. </p>

<p>By several reaches I don’t mean all eight ivies + M & S. I don’t even mean AWS+ W + P What I mean is if your dream school is Swarthmore, then you may as well include Pomona, Brown, Columbia and Yale. If your dream is Dartmouth then (just for example) you could add Princeton, Williams, Amherst, Penn. </p>

<p>So say that you end up with 5 super-selectives. On top of that you still need one no-error safety, sure bet. Two if you are a nervous type like me. You need 3 or so solid more-likely-than-not matches in case luck doesn’t grace you with the super-selectives. </p>

<p>If you want to follow the prevailing and excellent sleep at night advice you’ll also add an EA or rolling application. If that school overlaps with your other reach/match/safeties fine; if not, it’s still a good idea, even as a throw-away. </p>

<p>And lastly, if you’re shopping for financial aid dollars – especially merit based – then you may well need a parallel universe of reach/match/safeties. </p>

<p>So after using up all my fingers, I come up with a comfortable 10-12 applications. I don’t like it but looking at the increased number of applications to those super-selectives mentioned (and inevitable continued downslide in acceptance rates) I would accept the multi-pronged approach as the Way Things Are. You don’t need to go to a super selective school. But if you want to you’d better cast a wide net."</p>

<p>My D ended up applying to 10 schools:</p>

<p>3 super reach (very low acceptance rates)(all 100% need FA)
1 reasonable reach (100% need FA)
1 lesser reach (100% need FA & merit scholarships)
3 match (all 100% need, 2 with merit scholarships)
2 rolling safeties (both with merit scholarships)</p>

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<p>I’ll revive this thread, because 'tis the season to build college application lists, and I’ll note the thread about defining and finding safety colleges, </p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/493318-don-t-forget-apply-safety-college.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/493318-don-t-forget-apply-safety-college.html&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>which is part of the college selection process. Enjoy. Good luck in building your list and filling out your applications.</p>